cause these lights won't kill me now
by but seriously
Summary: "But you were always there," he continues as if she hadn't finally spoken. "In my sheets. Do you know how languorous you smell? How you linger? I was walking around 445 Lafayette Street one evening and when I looked up I saw the city as you saw it. Everything was on fire." AU/AH


prompted by somethingofthewolf/melissa on tumblr;_ "You are not even worth the calories I burn talking to you." MODEL AU MODEL AU MODEL AU"_. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I started out writing about 300 words of this in my head and it grew and grew until it was like, three times its size. I'm a bit apprehensive about this since I've never really written all-out AU/AH before. I dabbled a little with my Pushing Daisies AU, but there were still some elements of the supernatural in that, what with Kol being a vamp and Klaus bring dead guys back to life and such. So reviews con-crit what have you? They would be lovely. Well... here goes nothin'.

ALSO: FF I AM SO DONE WITH YOUR LINEBREAKING SHIT

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** 'cause these lights won't kill me now**

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Rebekah is a bitch.

She's of the horrendously talented up-and-comer variety, vapidly British with perfect teeth who can bend herself in any way, shape and form, looks flawless in any photo regardless of whatever calorie-loaded lunch she sneaks off of catering, is the fashion world's answer to the next Kate Moss – except with _curves_, Anna Wintour purrs.

And Caroline hates her. Hates her hates her hates her, because—

"She's a bitch!" she decrees as Bonnie sweeps shimmery gold eyeshadow over her eyelids. She's supposed to be sitting still as Bonnie bronzes her up, but how can she, knowing that Elie just overlooked her for his _The Roses of Heliogabalus_-inspired masterpiece in favour of _Rebekah_.

Elena's pouting in the mirror, inspecting her lipstick. "So you won't be closing the show, big deal. You closed for YSL last week."

"Yeah, but _this_—this is the first show of the season." Caroline turns to Bonnie, chagrined. "What does Rebekah have that I don't? Be as brutally honest as you want."

Bonnie leans down and smoothes lipstick over Caroline's down-turned lips. "Don't get me wrong, you have cheekbones to die for, but hers..." Bonnie trails off with a sigh. "Hers are a dream."

Caroline slumps back in her chair, grazing her reflection with a critical eye. Her skin's a shimmery gold and her hair is a precariously curled pile on her head held up with the help of Frederic Fekkai and silvery witchcraft, and her neck looks long, creamy, elegant swathed in the pink silk of her robe. Men have cried before her, girls have sent her mail hateful and adoring alike condemning her china doll skin, and yet…

She groans. Why does it always have to be the cheekbones?

—

"Well, I'm off. Ta darlings!" Rebekah says, sweeping out the door, but she halts when she hears Caroline's poorly-masked scoff.

"Got something to say, love?" Rebekah turns slowly and rests her sharply-manicured fingers on her hips. "Not still sore I stole your show from right under your nose, are you? Elie sent me roses afterwards. It matched the dress you were supposed to wear." Her lips curl cruelly.

Caroline stretches herself to her full height as Elena shifts uncomfortably; Vicki Donovan peeks her head out from behind a clothes rack and Anna pretends to be busy winding the laces of her Alice + Olivia gladiator flats, but Caroline can see her orange blossom-scented ears perking up.

"He sent me roses last fall. He sent Elena roses last winter. He has another show coming up in a few weeks that I'm already booked for, I wonder if he'll send me roses then again?" Caroline's smile matches Rebekah's tooth for tooth, gloss for gloss. "Don't sound so high and mighty now, Bekah - the world hasn't swept the rug from under your feet yet."

Rebekah bristles and sends her an icy glare. "You should be nicer to me. My brother's coming to shoot us tomorrow."

Caroline gives another scoff, because who in frozen hell cares about whatever lame B-list photographer her brother probably is, until she finds herself pressed flat against the door of the changing room she's sharing with Elena, heart thumping like a wild rabbit.

"Rebekah's a Mikaelson?" she half whispers, half wails, as Bonnie looks up from lining Elena's lashes with a smouldery charcoal grey. "She's related to Klaus Mikaelson? She's Klaus Mikaelson's _sister_?"

Bonnie tilts her head. "Yeah, he's her half-brother. She's still a Holt. I thought you knew?"

"She dropped the last name, remember? Anyway, Care's fasting. I have no idea when _iftar _is, but she's doing great so gar. Abstaining from all things evil. Cleansing herself of the toxins that could be building up in the poorly-painted highlights of Rebekah," Elena recites through pursed lipstick lips. "Her words, not mine. Bet you wished you checked IMDb now, huh?"

But Caroline's not listening anymore. She's pacing the room in frenzied steps, bare feet sinking into the soft shag carpeting. It's not so bad. She can do this. She whirls around, opens the door just a crack—and there he is.

It's just the profile of him, but her breath catches in her throat.

His hair is curls of twine coated gold, the plating wearing off to expose the inner metal of his dark roots. He's slouched over some text, probably something pretentious like the _Iliad_ the way he's frowning down at it. His mouth moves wordlessly, and she hates how she suddenly feels his breath fever hot on her, whispering his favourite lines into her stomach, branding her skin. She'd never been a Fitzgerald girl, but the next day she went out and bought a first-edition of _Tender is the Night_, and there it is right now with its cracked spine and dog-ears on her vanity. Partially hidden by compacts and blushes in every shade and tubes and tubes and tubes of lipstick, but it's there if you know where to look.

And Klaus knew where to look.

Caroline shuts the door and rests her forehead against it, her eyes closing.

This is bad.

She can't do this.

Seeing her all anguished, Elena adjusts a curl and says, poised and practiced: "So you might have pissed off renowned model _Just Rebekah, no last name_, who happens to be the sister of the even-more renowned photographer of our high-rising times. _So _there might be a chance of film sabotage and you might end up looking like a beached whale amidst golden swanlike Aphrodites. It doesn't matter. _Big deal_. You're Androktasiai, spirit of the battlefield slaughter."

Bonnie tuts reproachfully as she unpins Elena's hair. "Not exactly helpful."

Caroline moans into her hands.

So her lipstick's smudged, big freakin' deal.

She's battlefield slaughter.

—

"It isn't…" Caroline bites her lower lip. "It's not just the Rebekah thing I'm worried about."

Bonnie's fixing her lipstick. Elena's long gone now, off for lighting checks. Bonnie chuckles at the worry etched in her rose-dusted face, a lipbrush between her teeth. "It's not like you slept with him."

Caroline cringes, and the brush drops from her long-time friend's mouth as she _gapes_. "You did. You slept with him. You slept with Klaus _Mikaelson_. You slept with _Just Rebekah, no last name_'s brother."

"It was a one time _thing_." Caroline raises her hands to protect herself from Bonnie's offending stare.

Bonnie keeps staring.

"A long time ago," Caroline insists.

"So why are you huddled in here instead of firing off your pre-shoot checklist out there like you usually do?"

Caroline scowls. "I'm not huddled. There is no huddling."

Bonnie shrugs and takes a step back. "So it's okay if I just…"

"_Don't you dare touch that door_," Caroline shrieks and promptly buries her head in her arms. A lipstick tube knocks to the ground as her vanity shakes.

Bonnie strokes her hair gently. "You were saying?"

—

It was a one time thing.

It really was.

She'd been nineteen and so _fresh_, high from her dazzle and the glitz of first ever runway walk with Donna Karan, spinning around the darkened room with its strobe lights and pulsating beats in her sky-high heels. The air was hot and she was thirsty for something thick and heady, something that trickled like honey, and she found her answer in the slant of his lips as he'd pushed her back against the wall in the darkest corner of the room.

"I've been watching you all night," he says, husky against her lips, and hadn't her heart just _swelled_ at that? What would Matt Donovan say of her now, Matt who sat behind her in third period World History and danced with her at Homecoming, Matt who thought her dreams were too big and her horizon too wide but held her hand when Daddy left anyway.

Matt who was content to stay where he was; far too down-to-earth to reach where all the light was, where she was determined to be. Matt who dumped her the week before her seventeenth birthday, citing irreconcilable differences like they were before some court of law.

Klaus's hands feel warm on the back of her neck as he dips his tongue against the drum of her heartbeat, and suddenly she's not thinking of Matt Donovan anymore.

—

"Was it hard, being with him?" Bonnie asks, the click-clicking of a camera sounding miles away from behind their walls. It was her own way of asking What went wrong?

What did you do?

Caroline looks up at her. Bonnie would understand, she knows. It would be so easy to let the words slip out, tell the story of a one time thing that lasted a whole of three days in his little apartment on the Upper West Side where he'd whisked her away right in the middle of the after party. His little apartment with the see-through white drapes that billow into the room when you throw the windows open in the morning, his bed that smelled just like him: sweet and resinous, honeyed-cherry cigar.

He tasted like he smelled too, and she lapped at him with a hunger she didn't know she had in her, and he would hold her so tenderly, the kind of touch that comes with closed eyelids and pressed foreheads.

"You're not thinking of leaving already, are you?" he asks when he finds her lingering on his terrace. She's looking over the city, the swooping architecture of glass and steel that make the buildings look like they're on fire, basked in the red burn of the setting sun.

"You don't even know me."

He joins her at the terrace. His fingers slide across the coiled metal and brush against hers like a secret. "But I enjoy you."

She makes a face and he laughs, a deep throaty one. "Not that way, sweetheart. Although I do like the way your thighs wrap around—"

"Okay, stop!" Caroline giggles against his shoulder as she nudges him.

"So tell me, Caroline Forbes." The sunset paints him in red, as if the eerily wolflike smile he sends her isn't dangerous enough. "If you weren't planning on sneaking away, what is it that has you looking so solemn?"

"I was thinking—" she pauses. She looks out at the city again, its tall skylines and burning edges, the green trees just beginning to rust. Everyone looked like little ants she could pick off with her fingers, and she imagines them looking up at her and wishing they could be right where she was, a champagne supernova so high up in the sky.

He's still staring at her so intently, waiting.

"It doesn't really matter," she laughs at last. It gets blown away with the wind.

But it did, it mattered so much that it was all she could do not to slip out from his heavy arms, shake him awake, demand _Why me_? Why, in a room filled with beautiful people he'd singled her out, looked at her over the rim of his glass like she could call hurricanes with her smile. He'd approached her so carefully, feet barely touching the ground as they collided in the middle of the dance floor.

"I don't know if you've heard of me," he said in a voice that suggested he very much knew she had, "My name is Klaus."

He spoke so quietly in a room that screamed so loudly.

She hung on to every word.

"No, it wasn't hard," she tells Bonnie quietly now. "Just difficult."

"They're both the same."

"Are they?"

—

"Just so you know," Bonnie tells her as she sends her off, "You're not Androktasiai. You're Athena, Goddess of Courage and War. All you need is a little wisdom."

Caroline can only nod gratefully as the words get stuck in her throat before heads out into the slaughter.

"_Caroline!_" Jenna looks frazzled, and Caroline doesn't think she realizes she has like three pencils pushed through the bun at the top of her head. "Rebekah's done – we needed you here _yesterday_."

"Sorry," Caroline mutters to the set stylist as she's all but jostled onto the set.

Klaus is adjusting the settings on his camera. His foot is propped up on his sturdy little camera case, scratched at the corners from a shoot up in the Eilat Mountains. She knows this because he'd told her about it once.

Klaus's fiddling stops and he looks up. "Right, what's the concept this…"

The camera flashes in her face, but she's not even in the shot.

"Caroline," he breathes.

_You're Athena_, she reminds herself in her verdant green lace bustier top, the black brocade, the Noritaka Tatehana heels, eyebrows painted into a high arch. She lifts her chin. Strong, ageless, fearless.

"Are you just going to stand there or are you going take my picture?" She raises both eyebrows, daring him.

His jaw clenches and his eyes narrow and he lifts his camera to his face, obscuring the blue.

For a while there's nothing but Jenna calling out instructions, "Lower your chin just a little!" "Yes, perfect, but careful with your legs!" "Just a few more frames and we'll be done, Caroline.", the background music pounding away, the click of Klaus's camera. She bends and twists, smizes the way Tyra's taught her, gazes so deep his lens might shatter. Elena's sitting in a corner watching, studying. She still has her makeup on.

Caroline knows the part of this well – lights, camera, strike a pose; let someone put lipstick on you. She knows the flashing of the strobe lights and the whir of the camera, a snap of her fingers and people would come scurrying with their offerings, a sip of Perrier, a bit more blusher, maybe some champagne to loosen you up, watch you _go_. The wink of the photographer as he croons for you left, no a little bit to the right now, a bit more, _perfect_—

But Klaus is an entirely different story.

Klaus, he gives nothing away. Holds himself so still that all the stories about him must be a lie, every tabloid piece some fabricated version of the truth. How could this man, whose hands had once left her parched and wanting, be unable to hold in his rage, his temper flying with only the slightest push? Article after article after article, professing him brilliant but altogether too _passionate_, the fly in the ointment, something they thought would never be a fault in a photographer.

The only time he really looks at her is when she's struggling to get the last frame just _right—_Aphrodite might have had no trouble, but they never said Athena could model. Other times he squints at her from behind his lens, camera pressed to his cheek. Not saying a word, not directing an inch, and at one point Jenna throws her clipboard down. "I get that it's been a long day, but _work with me_, Klaus."

She fixes him with her patent Sommers scrutiny, and he locks on to it with the alleged Mikaelson temper that's just beginning to stir.

The music catches before continuing its loop.

Elena leans forward in her seat.

Jenna steps closer.

After a few seconds that feel like a million years, Klaus finally lowers his camera and looks at her with stony eyes. His voice is gruff, maybe just a little bit frustrated, but the honesty in it almost breaks her heart. "You're doing great, love. Just stop bloody thinking."

—

She's hurriedly slipping off her clothes with the help of Bonnie's deft fingers in between munching on celery sticks. She's _starving_; she's been eyeing that little black and white cookie that Rebekah so insists she must covet from catering, but knowing Klaus is prowling around out there just makes her want to leave as soon as possible. Jenna had waved her over to show her her frames but she'd all but skedaddled out of there, ignoring her.

"How was it?" Bonnie asks, combing out the hair stiffened by hairspray.

"It was—"

Klaus had barked orders at Anna. He'd asked Vicki to give him so many facial expressions her lips refused to lift afterwards, but with her it was nothing but blank silence. Nothing but click-click-clicking and a clipped, _We're done here_.

Not that she blamed him.

"—_ngeh_."

"You did kind of leave him hanging," Bonnie grits out, bobby pins between her teeth. "Seriously, Care—not even a phone call?"

"Just unzip me," Caroline snaps, leaping out of the dress when Bonnie does.

She's just reaching for her robe when the door swings open without as much as a knock, and she hears the familiar accent. "Could you give us a minute, darling?"

"Rebekah!" Caroline screeches. "Hello, changing? No, Bonnie—"

Bonnie's already gone, charged along by Rebekah's withering glare.

"Nothing I haven't seen before," Rebekah clicks her tongue impatiently as Caroline scrabbles for her robe. "Rio, remember? And apparently…" She stops in front of the mirror, watching Caroline's reflection, "nothing my brother hasn't seen either."

Caroline flinches. "He told you."

"He doesn't have to _tell _me anything," Rebekah scoffs with a toss of her hair. "He's my _brother_. I know him, I love him more than the world can even begin to fathom. I grew up with smashed toys and muffled screaming, seen the slew of heartbroken bints that left him far more broken, but I have never – _ever_ – seen him as terrifyingly angry as he'd been just now."

"He didn't look—"

"Oh you're not daft, why pretend?" Rebekah looks over her shoulder. "I can handle us getting into silly little tiffs like who gets to eat the cake _and _be the featured spread; God knows our paths cross enough for me to have just a tiny smidge of respect for you outside of all the ardent disgust I have about your hair—"

"You're telling me. Your extensions are showing."

Rebekah goes on in an even louder voice, "I can _handle_ your pathetic self-righteousness about my being here only because my mother happens to pick out Giorgio's clothes, but do not, and I repeat, _do not_ break my brother more than you already have."

"I—" Caroline wrings her hands. "I didn't—"

"He stitches himself back together so well," Rebekah says softly. "It's in our blood. Our mother was a seamstress."

"It was a one time thing," Caroline whispers, awash with an unexpected, puzzling guilt. She doesn't understand it. How three years of practiced chants in front of her mirror could unravel in just one day. "It couldn't have meant that much to him."

Rebekah pushes away from her dresser. "If you really think that, I give you way more credit than you deserve."

—

The studio's empty, its corners dark and whispering.

Klaus is packing up his camera, taking apart bits and knobs. She gingerly picks up his tripod and walks over to him. "Here."

It's like he's battling with himself, wondering what to say the way his shoulders tense over his open case. He looks up at her. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she says uncertainly. All traces of Athena seemed to have left her when she'd wiped all that caked foundation, the shimmery bronzer, the spidery mascara, the red wine lips.

He's looking at her with a curious expression on his face. His eyes remind her of sea foam, when the waves crash against briny rocks blacker than the depths of the sea, beguiling. She feels sand, cold and gritty between her toes; salt tangled in her hair every time he looks at her, and she hates how he reminds her of a town she'd once thought she'd never get out of.

Caroline returns his gaze. Her makeup's been scrubbed off; she has nothing to hide.

"Why are you still here?" Klaus wants to know.

That's actually not a bad place to start. She looks around, and Klaus, always knowing what she wants, pulls up a chair for her. He leans against the table.

She's still chewing on her words. Klaus heaves a sigh and snaps his case shut. "You didn't call. You didn't text. You all but disappeared."

"I'm sorry about that."

"But you were always there," he continues as if she hadn't finally spoken. "In my sheets. Do you know how languorous you smell? How you linger? I was walking around 445 Lafayette Street one evening and when I looked up I saw the city as you saw it. Everything was on fire. It was like a rediscovery. My film roll became entrenched by it; I shot nothing but skylines for months." Klaus shoots her an impish grin. "Vexed my agent, so I fired him."

It's vexing her too, all of this. Ben Lyons was right about him being passionate, but he never wrote about how it would steal the wind from her and leave her reeling. She swallows, and it's a bit like swallowing the sea – she tastes salt and doubt and endless, endless currents.

Klaus pierces her with his seafoam eyes and says, "You linger even now."

His fingers find their way into the tangled knot of her hair and he leans in so close all she can do is wait with bated breath, too scared to shut her eyes.

"Do you even want me to kiss you right now, love?" His breath is hot and wet on her parted lips. "Because I could. I want to."

"I want you to," she whispers, surprising even herself.

And he closes the distance between them like he'd been waiting for her word the entire time, his eyes darkening like a storm rolling in, but he doesn't close them until she closes hers, at the last moment when their lips finally meet. It's a soft kiss but it burns right through her, and she learns anew the taste of his mouth. He sweeps his finger across her cheekbone, as if trying to remember the contours of her face, to see what's changed about her over the years.

_Everything_, she wants to gasp as his other hand traces tantalizing patterns through the thin material covering the small of her back. Her skin feels sensitized, humming where he touches her, and she grasps at his neck and bites down on his lazy, roving tongue that he'd eased into her mouth.

His tug on her hair like a reprimand, she gives his tongue a gentle suckling before coming up for air. His eyes are still closed, and he leans into her like it's a reflex imbued into his bones. She lifts her hand to his cheek, holding him there.

"Why did you leave?" he asks huskily. She hopes he doesn't open his eyes so blue she might forget her words.

Why did she leave?

Just stop bloody thinking.

"I was spoken for," she says quietly.

His forehead presses harder against hers and she feels his grip tighten around the small of her back. Possessive. "Please don't tell me it was that low-rent Tyler Sh—"

"_No_," she scoffs, pushing away. He stumbles a little but catches himself against the table, and that's when his eyes snap open. "Good to know you were keeping tabs."

"It was splashed across page six, how could I not?" Klaus growls. He sounds so mocking she has to turn away. "_Tyler Shields—Boyfriend of Elusive, Effervescent Caroline Forbes." _

She thinks of Rebekah. She can certainly see the family resemblance.

"Klaus," Caroline says, all upward inflections. It's not supposed to sound like a protest, but she supposes it does now.

"Then _who_—"

"Me, okay?" Caroline bursts out, hands thrown in the air. "I was spoken for by _me_. What would you understand about a girl standing in a room filled with amazing people wearing Jimmy Choos that had hardly even been broken in? Hopes and dreams whispered so _earnestly _into a pillow in a little room in Virginia. A pillow, because everyone else laughed when I told them. Oh, Caroline wants to model. What a dream. What a silly, ridiculous, little girl's dream."

"Caroline—"

She draws away from his reaching hand until her back bumps into the table. "At one point those hopes turned into prayers. What's the difference, really? I made it anyway. I still wear Vanilla Lip Smackers on the weekends, what would you want with a girl like that? A girl like me? You were standing by the bar in that dark little room drinking alone. I saw you too.

"So I left, because I was saving me. You were Klaus _Mikaelson_. All those awards lining your shelves. Hasselblad. Deutsche Börse. I didn't want that, Klaus – I didn't want a stepping stone, I'd already worked so hard to get there. I didn't want to be Caroline Forbes, Girlfriend of Klaus Mikaelson, I wanted—I wanted to be—"

"Tyler Shields," Klaus finishes for her, striding closer with every word. "Boyfriend of elusive – effervescent—"

"Caroline Forbes," she says a little breathlessly when he's right in front of her. He's standing so _close_, a part of her without being part of her. "I didn't want the labels. I wanted to be my own person."

"And now someone else is labeled to you."

She feels a faint pride rising in her chest at that, and she can't quite stop it from showing in her smile. "I guess he just has to work harder."

"I guess he does." Klaus kisses her again, harder this time, with the fleeting desperation of a young boy who's never done this before. His hips move roughly against hers and he makes space for her so she can settle herself against his legs, groaning when she pulls at his hair, rustles her fingers down, plays at his neck. He's panting slightly, some of that apprehension still there when he asks, "What was it like for you? When we were…"

This time she doesn't even have to think.

"A rediscovery," she affirms, earning her a nibbling at her earlobe so soft it's a whisper.

—

She's wrapped in his shirt, almost drowning in it. The material feels luxurious against her skin, and she smells of his expensive cologne, warm and delicious. Her legs dangle from where she's sitting on the table, her toes barely touching the ground.

"I'm keeping your shirt, you know," she tells him with a playful smile, but he just grins back, balls up her panties and slips it into his pockets. "So we're even, _sweetheart_." She drags the word slowly through her teeth like a taunting, like she's pulling on a cigarette, blowing smoke and sweet, sweet cherries in swirls around him.

"Do you need a ride home, sweetheart?" The knowledge that he's teaching her how to use it properly, so much ferocity disguised as tenderness wrapped in those two syllables—it's not lost on her.

She shakes her head. "I'll be fine."

She doesn't need to remind him that she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. It's a bitter little pill for him to swallow, and she sees it in the stiffness of his fingers as he buttons his coat all the way to his neck. But she needs to do this.

He has to learn.

Klaus smiles, a little strained. "Oh yes." He pulls something out of his coat and drops it down onto the table. "Here. They've already printed out a few samples."

He lifts his camera case by its handles, brushes the lightest of kisses on her forehead, and turns to leave. The one lone light in the corner casts his shadow like the mournful convulsing of a beast, until it stretches so long it's almost as if he's part of the studio itself. The door's pushed open and he steps outside, coat sweeping after him. He looks back once, she thinks, but she can't be too sure because she's too busy studying the envelope he's left.

It's a long time before she could even think about taking the envelope in her hands, and even longer for her to actually start rooting through it. The photographs spill into her hands, glossy and new. There's Rebekah looking so sultry with her vixen smile, Elena with lips that bled innocence, a close up of Anna's catchlight eyes, another shot of Rebekah, and another one, and another one, and another one. It makes sense; she is, after all, this month's cover.

"Blah." She tosses the photos aside, shuffling through them quickly, until she finds it. A picture of herself. Even without words he knew exactly how to frame her, her hair spilling over her shoulders in voluminous waves and her eyes needing no catchlight to scorch right through the film.

She looks like the sea's swept through her.

She lets out a curse laced with a breath of a laugh and stuffs the photo back in the envelope. She hopes down to her bare feet, disregards her Jimmy Choos entirely as she races out the studio, where she knows he's probably still lingering outside.

She hopes, at any rate.

Prays, almost – but in these high-rising times can you really tell the difference?


End file.
